Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, continuing to fight for its existence, welcomed a ruling today by a federal district court judge.
It said Judge Royce Lamberth granted RFE/RL’s request for a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
He ordered USAGM to disburse the rest of the agency’s congressionally appropriated funds for fiscal 2025.
RFE/RL said Lamberth wrote that it was unprecedented for an agency to demand that new terms govern its working relationship with a grantee entity and then stop responding, “particularly when the agency is statutorily obligated to grant yearly congressional appropriations to that specific entity by name.” He cited USAGM’s “flagrant disregard for its funding responsibilities.”
President/CEO Stephen Capus welcomed the ruling. “Time and again, the court has ruled in our favor on the basic issue of the release of our congressionally appropriated funds.”
Radio World has invited comment from USAGM and will report any reply.
The organization reports to 23 countries in Europe and Asia.
In March, USAGM Senior Advisor Kari Lake said that “waste, fraud and abuse run rampant” in USAGM. She alleged that the agency had been victimized by “massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency,” that it had issued “eye-popping self-dealing involving contracts, grants and high-value settlement agreements,” spent hundreds of millions on “fake news companies” and put out a product that “often parrots the talking points of America’s adversaries.”
RFE/RL Inc. is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation funded by Congress through a grant from USAGM. That body in turn is nominally an independent federal government agency that oversees U.S. civilian international media including Voice of America and Radio and TV Martí. RFE/RL is a grantee, as are Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
In June, Capus said that RFE/RL was seeking to build bipartisan support in Congress to keep operating when approved financing ends later this year, according to Reuters.
